


A Clifftop Meeting

by Poyomon2



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Backstory Differences, Heavy Angst, Minor Appearances by Shoichi and Akira, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 02:21:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16546979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poyomon2/pseuds/Poyomon2
Summary: Two teenagers unexpectedly meet at the top of a cliff. They're both there for the same reason.





	A Clifftop Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> **First, this fic contains suicidal thoughts by both Yusaku and Aoi. Consider yourself warned. It does not contain actual suicide, though.**
> 
> Second, this is set roughly a year before canon.
> 
> Third, I wrote this a year ago. As a result, there are some differences from canon in the backstory since we have found out more since then.
> 
>   * _Yusaku does not remember anything from before the Lost Incident. This includes the fact that it was Ryoken who kidnapped him._
>   * _Yusaku and Shoichi first met outside of Link VRAINS, and have not found out the connection to the Knights of Hanoi yet. Shoichi also gave him a place to stay._
> 

> 
> Those are the most major differences.

The mud on his shoes squelched against rock as Yusaku crested the hill and was met with a cliff overlooking the ocean. He let out a dejected sigh as he moved forward, but stopped at a peculiar sight.

“Ah…” 

A brown haired girl stood near the edge of the cliff, looking back at him through the rain as she was alerted by the sound. 

“I wasn't expecting anyone else to be here.”

The girl tilted her head. “Why?” 

Yusaku sighed again before speaking. “One, it’s raining heavily. Two, this location is secluded and difficult to get to. Three, I didn’t want anyone to see me.” 

The girl stepped towards him. “Then why are you here? As you said, it’s raining and it’s difficult to get here.” 

Yusaku shook his head. “That’s none of your business.” 

The girl moved even closer, reaching her hands out to grab his arms. Then she spoke once more.

“You’re here to jump.” 

Yusaku tore away from her as she said the words, staring at her in disbelief.

“No! I-” The lie caught in his throat and he gave up. “How did you know?” 

The girl gave a sad smile and tilted her head back slightly to look at the sky. Were those tears on her face or was it just the rain?

“Because that’s why I’m here as well.”

Silence reigned as Yusaku processed her words in shock. It was soon broken as a phone began to ring, and the girl’s eyes widened, hand moving to her pocket. As she drew the phone out, Yusaku was able to see the type. It was one of the newer, expensive models and he frowned, thinking she was, at the very least, not hurting in terms of money.

She stared at the phone in her hand, the screen illuminating her face through the darkness of the storm. As he watched, her expression slowly changed to that of a scowl, before she took the most unexpected course of action.

She dropped the phone.

It tumbled from her grasp towards the ground, and Yusaku was able to catch a glimpse of the caller. Apparently, it was her brother. Then the phone hit the ground, the screen shattering and going black before being flooded by the rainwater.

Both teenagers stared at the phone, before the girl bent down to pick it back up. Yusaku grabbed her hand that was holding the phone.

“Why?” 

She looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Why would you ignore your brother’s call?” 

The girl ripped her hand away and stepped back towards the cliff. Then she spun and, with a frustrated scream, threw the phone over the edge and into the ocean.

She collapsed to the ground, sobbing as Yusaku looked on in confusion.

“I hate him! Why does he have to pretend to care? He says that he cares, but then never makes the effort to spend time with me. All he does is spend money to make sure I’m comfortable but I don’t want that!” Yusaku was taken aback by her sudden outburst. “I’m just dragging him down and making sure he can’t live for himself, so why should I keep hanging around? If I disappear he won’t have to worry about anything!”

Anger flared up as Yusaku stepped forward and gripped her arm, pulling her up from the ground to face him.

“At least you have a family!” He hissed. She stared back in shock. Tears began to well up in his eyes as he shouted. “I’m fifteen and I’d lived in an orphanage for almost as long as I can remember! Almost ten years hoping that someday, some prospective parents would come in and choose me, but it never happened! Not even the carers thought I had a chance anymore! They had all but given up on me! It’s only recently that someone gave me a place to stay, but it was probably just because he pitied me. He didn’t need to get me a home.”

“I- I’m sorry…” 

Yusaku shook his head. “Don't be sorry. Just be grateful that you have some kind of family.”

“Do I, really? I’m not sure of when I last spoke to my brother in person. He always gets home from work after I go to bed, if at all, and he leaves long before I wake up. How can I call him family when he doesn't act like it?”

Yusaku’s grip loosened, but she continued speaking before he could form a reply.

“We’re not even related, he only provides for me because our parents got married and then had an accident.”

Yusaku was silent as he realised that unlike him, she remembered her parents. At least he didn't have to deal with having lost his parents, since he didn't remember them in the first place.

Another thought hit him and he knelt down beside her. “What about your friends? Won’t they miss you if you’re gone?” 

The girl scoffed at him. “I’m Aoi Zaizen, who would want to be friends because they care about me? All anyone ever looks at is the fact that my brother is a big shot at SOL Technologies, and they just want the benefits of being a ‘friend’. A job, a duel disk, any number of things, without fail they end up asking about them instead of actually trying to be my friend. Besides, don't you have your own friends that would miss you?”

Yusaku flinched as his question was unexpectedly thrown back at him.

“No. I don't. I try and lay low at school due to my own circumstances. Besides that, in the past, whenever someone found out I’m an orphan, they would always distance themselves from me. Instead of trying to change people's opinions of me, I decided to just stay isolated. I have my own problems related to the past to deal with, and I don't want others to get involved anyway.”

The girl - Aoi - looked at him in confusion.

“If you have problems to deal with, why are you trying to suicide?” 

Yusaku gave a hollow laugh. “I have nightmares frequently, and it forces me to relive the pain I went through at that time. I’ve tried investigating about the events from back then, but I’ve spent so long without any leads. If I can’t solve the problem one way, I can just solve it through another, right? The pain will go away, and the person I work with will do better without me anyway.”

Aoi was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, it was with a softer tone. “What happened in your past?”

Yusaku hesitated, a complicated look on his face. “I… don’t really want to talk about it.”

Aoi hummed. “What if we trade?”

“Trade?”

“Trade stories, I mean. I’ll tell you about my past, and you tell me about yours. How about that?”

Yusaku frowned, unsure of the idea. “Are you sure?”

Aoi shrugged. “No, but why not? If you’re going to suicide, wouldn’t it be more comfortable for at least someone to know what you’ve been through? It’s not like either of us will be around to share our stories with anyone else, right?” She gave a small laugh with no emotion behind it. “Besides, isn’t talking about your problems with another person supposed to help you feel better?”

Yusaku tentatively nodded his head. “I guess that makes sense. I’m still not sure, though.”

“I can go first then.” Aoi laid down on the ground. “We never introduced ourselves properly, right? I’m Aoi Zaizen, as I mentioned earlier.” She gestured for him to lie down, so he did, seeing as they were both already drenched from the rain.

“Yusaku Fujiki.”

Aoi let out a sigh. “I’ve never actually told anyone about my past. Because of how everyone treated me, I was never close enough to anyone to want to. Now look at me, telling it to somebody I just met.”

She paused for a moment, and then began. “When I was younger, my parents started dating and I met the person who would be my step-brother. Eventually they got married, but a year after that on their anniversary, they were in an accident and passed away.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “After that, our relatives completely blocked us out and took almost everything. The house, most of our money. We barely had enough to get by. None of our relatives even tried to take us in, only caring about bleeding us dry for everything we had.”

Yusaku interrupted her to ask a question. “How old were you?”

“I was six. My step-brother is ten years older than me.” She drew breath to continue. “Because our relatives didn’t want us, we were left out on the street. Even now, I’m not sure why we weren’t picked up by an orphanage. A teenager and a child, clearly living on the streets, and nobody cared. We were always moving. My brother had some skills in hacking, so he would pick up jobs from around the city, just so we would have enough money to eat, and occasionally we would be able to stay somewhere if he saved enough. We spent months like that. Eventually someone took an interest in my brother’s skills and offered him a proper job, which he accepted. Later on, he even told me the conditions were terrible, but at least he was earning enough money that we could have somewhere more permanent to stay.”

“About a year after that, he started to rise in the ranks of that job before being offered a job at SOL Technologies. I was finally able to start attending school again, but I couldn’t seem to make many friends. I was the odd one out, the one with no parents. Back then, I wasn’t sure why nobody would talk to me, but at that age nobody understands it when somebody doesn’t have parents. To them, I was the weird girl that was different from everyone else.” Her voice started to waver. “I didn’t understand. I just wanted some friends like all the other kids! I would try to talk to them, but they would just keep away from me.”

Tears were beginning to stream down her cheeks, and Yusaku reached out to try and comfort her by holding her arm.

“It was like that for me, as well. I mentioned it earlier, but when I was younger, all the children would openly ignore me, and the adults would pity me, because I didn’t have a family. I spent most of my childhood wondering what it would be like to have a family.”

Aoi raised an arm to wipe the tears off her face, despite the still pouring rain. “I kept moving through school like that, never able to make any friends. Eventually, I locked away most of my feelings, putting up a cold mask to interact with people. Then, a few years ago, my brother gave me a duel disk for my birthday. He’d been slowly rising up the ranks and was finally in a situation where he could easily provide for more than just the both of us. His status didn’t make me feel any better, if anything, it made me feel worse because he started spending even more time at work than at home. He told me that he just wanted me to be happy, and that was enough for him after all we’d been through. Why couldn’t he understand that I just wanted to spend time with him? He was never around, and I don’t think he ever realised that I still didn’t have any friends.”

“After he gave me the duel disk, he gave me a deck and showed me how to log in to Link VRAINS. At first, I was interested to see the world that my brother was helping to oversee, but once I started dueling it turned out I was a natural at it and I quickly became popular. Originally I was happy, but then people would start getting close to me just because of how popular I was. Once again, I wasn’t going to be able to make any proper friends, and that just threw me further into the whirlpool of despair that I thought I was climbing out of. Then the reporters came in, shouting about ‘Blue Angel, can you be a mascot for us!’ or ‘Blue Angel, can we make a photoshoot with you starring in it!’. I didn’t want the attention, but I was too far into it to quit. So, here I am, a broken girl with two masks to switch between. One being Blue Angel, a happy, bubbly idol who is always trying to please her fans, and the other being Aoi Zaizen, a cold bitch who turns down anyone who tries to date her, but doesn’t even have any friends.”

The both of them were silent for a few minutes. Eventually, she took a deep breath, and sat up.

“Thank you, for listening. After telling someone, I’m feeling a bit better. Do you want to share your past? It’s fine if you don’t want to.”

Yusaku continued to lie there for a minute, thinking. Soon, he sighed, nodding. He would feel bad if he’d listened all the way through that and didn’t have the decency to tell her his own story. She laid back down, ready to listen.

“I don’t remember anything from before I was six years old. The first thing I remember is waking up in a small room with nothing but a VR headset. The only thing I could remember then was my name. When I put on the headset, I was shown a duel arena where I had to duel other people. If I won, I would be provided with food,” Aoi gasped. “And if I lost…”

Aoi worriedly leaned in. “If you lost?”

“I would get shocked. It would be worse depending on how much I lost by. There would be times when I would lose by such a large margin that I passed out from the pain.” Yusaku grit his teeth in anger. “I didn’t understand anything. Why me? What did I do to deserve this?” Tears ran from his eyes. “I wanted to leave. After one of my duels, I heard a voice telling me to think of three things. Three things to continue living. By thinking, I could continue to live. I could go home.”

He scowled, clenching his hands. “Now, sometimes, I wish I hadn’t.” With that, he fell silent for a moment.

 

Aoi was silent beside him, waiting for him to continue.

“I don’t know how much longer it took, but I was eventually told I could go home. Some adults opened a door and I was told I was rescued. Even now, it doesn’t feel like I was rescued. After all, the voice said I could go home, right? That should mean that whatever they were doing was finished. I passed out, and then when I woke up, I was in an orphanage. They said that they tried to find any trace of my family, but they couldn’t, so I was going to be staying at the orphanage for the foreseeable future.”

Aoi spoke. “And you’ve been there ever since.”

Yusaku took a deep breath, and nodded. “Right. It turns out that I was in that room for a full six months. Six months of being kidnapped and tortured for a reason I don’t even know. I couldn’t hold a conversation with anyone for a long time. The carers at the orphanage would try and get therapists to help me, but nothing ever seemed to work. I tried so hard to be happy, but I could never forget. I would have nightmares almost every night, about getting shocked over and over again, as if I’d never been rescued at all. It took me almost another year to be able to attend any kind of school, and by then I was well and truly ignored by anyone that was my age. The years would go by, and I would watch every day as prospective parents would come in, sometimes choosing other children who would go home with a new, happy family. As I got older I slowly lost hope.” His voice choked for a moment. “All I wanted was a family. Everyone around me at school was happy, and they had families, while I wasn’t happy and I didn’t, so that means everyone who has a family is happy, right? Of course, after talking to you, I know that it’s not always like that, but I’ve been thinking like that for years now, and it made so much sense at the time.”

“Eventually, I decided to give up. Nobody wanted me around, so I could just live without them. I shut myself away from everyone else, focusing on my studies and making plans to find out what happened to me in the past. I started to learn hacking, so that I could try and dig deeper when finding information, but even that hasn’t helped much. There’s so little information about the incident. It was covered up, so the media couldn’t report on it. I’ve only found small leads that would quickly reach an end, and it’s only recently that I finally met somebody else with a connection to the incident. I don’t know why, but he gave me a place to stay. But he has so much more experience than me. I’m sure if I wasn’t around dragging him down he would be able to make more progress. Recently we’ve been trying to dig through Link VRAINS for some leads, since it’s the most prominent VR system, but we’ve had no luck there. I don’t know why I even bother. None of the leads I have found have ever yielded any useful information, so who knows when they will? I’ll have to spend my entire life dealing with nightmares and reliving the pain from when I was kidnapped. Why should I bother? It’d be easier just to end it all instead of having to feel all of the pain for the rest of my life.”

The two of them laid in silence after Yusaku finished speaking.

Aoi thought of a question. “Why didn’t you ask for help from SOL Technologies?”

Yusaku sighed. “We don’t trust them. Even then, who’s to say they won’t just ignore us? We’re just two people who have no standing, asking about an event from almost a decade ago.”

“I see.”

The silence continued. A few minutes passed before Aoi sat up and looked at him.

“Do you feel better after talking about it?”

Yusaku thought about it. Did he feel better? “Yes. Thank you for suggesting that I talk about it.”

“It’s no problem at all. I should have talked about myself to somebody a long time ago.” Her next question made him flinch. “Do you want to be friends?”

He gaped. “Why would you want to be friends with me?”

She grabbed his arm. “It seems like we’d both be better off if we just had a friend and somebody to talk to. It can’t hurt to give it one more try, right? If it turns out badly, we can just come back here and finish what we started.”

Yusaku stood up. “I… Thank you. I’ll give it one more try. We shouldn’t tell anybody else about this though.”

“Of course. If we told anyone they definitely wouldn’t react well.”

She stood up and he froze as she suddenly hugged him.

“Thank you. I came up here ready to die today, but after meeting you I feel like I don’t have to.” Then she released him and he calmed down. “Do you want to go back together?”

Yusaku nodded and the two of them set off back down the cliff. After returning to the city, they agreed on a place to meet again and then set off on their separate ways, both smiling slightly.

\---

Still drenched from the rain, Aoi returned home to her apartment. She was immediately caught off guard and hugged by her brother, who had been panicking.

“Aoi! Where were you? Why didn’t you answer your phone?” 

Aoi felt awkward in her brother’s embrace, and removed herself from it. “I dropped my phone and it broke in the rain.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. It just wasn’t the full truth.

“Why are you so drenched? What were you doing out in the rain?”

Aoi gave a small smile. “I was talking to a friend. Why are you home so early?”

“I was worried about you. You weren’t answering my calls, and you weren’t at home. How could I not be worried?”

Aoi hesitated, and then tentatively hugged her brother. “Thank you.”

\---

Yusaku made his way back to his own apartment, and spotted a familiar truck outside. Heading into the apartment, he found his associate waiting for him.

“Yusaku! Where have you been? I’ve been looking for you!”

Yusaku was caught off guard by his excited tone. “Kusanagi? What happened?”

Shoichi grinned. “I found a lead! The name of the incident was the Hanoi Project. We’re finally making some concrete progress.”

Yusaku started crying. But he was smiling.

“Yusaku? Are you okay?”

He nodded, wiping his tears away. “That’s great, Kusanagi! It’s taken this long, but we’re getting closer at last.”

Shoichi nodded. “But, I’ve been looking for you for hours! Where did you disappear to?”

Yusaku gave a small smile. “I was out with a friend.”

Shoichi was taken aback. “A friend? When did you make a friend?”

“I met them today, actually.”

Shoichi clapped his hand on Yusaku’s shoulder. “It’s about time you made a friend! I thought you never would!”

Yusaku’s face contorted in anger and he shouted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

\---

Yusaku sniffled as he approached the plaza that they agreed to meet at. As he reached it, he noticed Aoi along the edge, looking around and spotting him, before walking towards him.

He waved at her and she waved back.

“Yusaku!” He smiled slightly, then gave a cough and she stopped. “You have a cold, too?”

He blinked. “Too? You mean, you as well?” Aoi nodded.

They both started laughing, and then dissolved into coughing fits.

“I suppose that’s what we get for standing out in the rain for so long.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, if you made it this far!
> 
> I can be found on Tumblr at [Poyomon2](poyomon2.tumblr.com).


End file.
